An electronic vector graphics document can include many different graphical elements that are instantiated from various element types, such as circles, ellipses, lines, polygons, etc. For example, a user draws a simple apple tree using a cylinder for the trunk and a series of lines radiating from the trunk representing branches of the tree. To represent apples on the tree, the user adds 20 copies of a circle having a red fill color and positions the circles adjacent to the lines in various locations around the tree.
While editing such vector graphics documents in a computing device, users often modify particular elements in the vector graphics document. For example, the user modifies the apple tree that they have previously drawn to instead be an orange tree. To do so, the user needs to find all of the red-colored circles representing apples and replace them with orange-colored circles to represent oranges. While a user can perform this edit manually, it is tedious and time-consuming, particularly when the document includes tens, hundreds, or more instances of such an element.